406 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTRAL INDIA. 



bush, and then rode back full split for a heavy rifle. About 

 a mile behind I met B. with the rifles and dogs, and we pro- 

 ceeded together to finish off the cow. My large rifle had got 

 bulged in one barrel some time before, being unable to bear 

 the proper charges for buffalo-shooting, so I had only one 

 barrel to depend on. "We walked up through the grass close 

 to the spot I had marked, but she was not there. 1 soon lost 

 the bearings, there being fifty bushes just like the one I had 

 marked her by, and we wandered about, a little apart, looking 

 for her. I had stood up on an ant-hill to get a better look, 

 when just below me up started her savage-looking head and 

 long horns, and she plunged towards me in the grass. A ball 

 from the heavy rifle in the neck turned her, and she passed 

 between B. and me, preventing both of us from further firing. 

 The dogs now tackled her, " Tinker" in particular (whose 

 deeds of valour in the wolf line have already been recorded) 

 striving to seize her by the nose as she tore along. A 

 couple of hundred yards further on she stopped in another 

 patch of grass, the dogs baying round her, and Tinker, 

 exhausted by the great heat, lying down in the shade of a 

 bush, but flying at her the moment she tried to move. We 

 marched up, at a short interval from each other, and, arriving 

 first on her blind side, I saw her glance at B., shake off the 

 dogs, and creeping forward in a stealthy manner like a tiger, 

 watch for him, with horns laid back, behind the screen of grass 

 and bushes that intervened. Before he arrived, however, I 

 took a steady shot at her neck with the little double fourteen - 

 gauge rifle, dropping her stone dead. We found she had an 

 old bullet wound in the flank, which was full of maggots, 

 accounting for her extremely poor condition and unusual 

 savageness. The small-bore rifle of our predecessor in these 

 hunting-grounds was probably the cause. Her horns were of 



